


Angels of the End

by Fugitive



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-10-01 16:30:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20336344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fugitive/pseuds/Fugitive
Summary: How Supernatural Ends





	Angels of the End

Castiel throws himself over Dean, his voice a scream. “Noooo!”  


Dean feels feathers and heat surround him as the angel’s not inconsiderable weight presses him down into the golden throne.  


From between the feathers he sees Chuck raise his fingers, then pause. “Why are you trying to stop me, Castiel? Why do you love these creatures more than your own immortal existence?”  


“Can’t you see? They are worthy of love!”  


“How many of them? Half a dozen, if you’re lucky?”  


“Father, I beg you. Leave them be.”  


Dean is breathing the smell of fear and feathers.  


Suddenly, an idea comes to Chuck. “Fine. YOU have them!”  


So he snaps his fingers, and instead of… well, everything disappearing, Chuck does. And Castiel begins to heat up. Like, REALLY heat up. Dean screams in pain as the temperature coming from the feathers around him soars over the hundred degree mark. Castiel throws him aside and Dean feels burns that he knows will scar him worse than the last time the angel dragged him up and threw him out of harm’s way.  


Only this time ‘harm’ seems to be Cas. Dean tries to shield his face from the heat, but feels it begin to scorch his skin and dry his eyeballs. He throws him arms up in front of his face-  


And just like that, he’s in the bunker.  


At first it’s so dark he can’t see. But then slowly his vision returns and he realizes that it’s not dark at all, it’s just taking his seared vision time to recover. “Cas?” he whispers, remembering other times people have ended up on the wrong side of Chuck.  


Silence.  


Dean walks around the bunker, swearing under his breath. He finds his phone where he left it, and picks it up. The screen is dark. He taps it, and tries pushing all the buttons. Nothing. He plugs it into the charger by the table but even that doesn’t make the screen light up. He takes the stairs two at a time and unlocks the door, opening it a crack so the fire and sand won’t come in…..  


He opens it a crack more. The smell assails his nostrils first: green trees and grass and flowers. Then he hears it: the twitter of birds and the distant barking of a dog.  


Dean opens the door and stares. Outside, the countryside is lush and vibrantly green, greener than he ever remembers seeing it: so green it hurts his eyes to look at it.  


“Oh, hey,” says a voice behind him, and Sam pushes past to walk outside. “Have you lost your phone signal? Mine stopped a few minutes ago.”  


Dean stares at him, wants to grab him and hug him and not let him go, but Sam is so matter-of-fact about NOT being dead, that Dean would feel like an idiot. 

Instead he nods and stares and drinks in the greenery and the fuck – BIRDS – and wonders what the hell just happened.  


“Not Hell,” said a voice so gentle behind him that he doesn’t recognize it as Lucifer’s at first.  


Dean stares at Lucifer. He knows he should stab him or something, but there is something so completely different about the archangel that Dean knows that is not what he needs to do. He has no other real choice, so he just listens.  


Lucifer sighs and seems to be enjoying their surroundings as much as Dean.  


“I should stab you.” But there’s no real sting in the words, and Lucifer just gives a half-smile and turns his head a little toward Dean.  


“It wouldn’t do you any good.”  


“What the Hell, Lucifer? What just happened?”  


“Oh…. lots of things. Most of them way above your pay grade. In fact,” And he turns to Dean and Dean is stunned by the sheer cold BEAUTY in those eyes, “Well above ‘Chuck’s pay grade too.”  


Dean is silent. He has one eye on Sammy, making sure Sammy isn’t wandering off. And he has no clue what Lucifer’s talking about. He notices that Lucifer did not say it was above his own pay grade.  


“Care to enlighten me,” he says tightly, “To the LIMIT of my understanding then?”  


Lucifer thinks about that.  


Eventually he turns to Dean, “Have you ever heard the expression ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely?”  


“Yes.”  


“Well, it’s not a saying to be taken lightly. So when… we… put someone in a position of power, we run them through a test first.”  


“We? Who? And who are you testing?”  


The beautiful eyes turn to look at him again, mild resignation in them, and heaven help Dean if he doesn’t want to gaze into them all day. “Chuck.”  


(Lucifer waits while that sinks in. It takes a while, because it’s a lot for anyone to take in, and well… Dean is a Winchester after all. Adorable but slightly slower creatures than the average human sometimes. Especially when you are turning their entire world view on its head with one word.)  


Dean finds a handy brick wall and sits down on it. “You’re testing… Chuck?”  


“Yes. It’s quite simple really. He was given this planet as a test, a parole period if you’d like, to see how he handled it.”  


“And…”  


“Well, you can see for yourself. Not too well.” Lucifer purses his lips and looks sad.  


“Which… wait… so he’s not God?”  


“That egotistical, unreliable flake? Lords help us no.”  


“Then what is he?”  


“Ummmm.” Lucifer has the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, actually, technically… nothing, any more.”  


“Lucifer…. who, who is in charge then?”  


Lucifer smiles and looks around. “No one, Dean. I mean, what makes you think one angel could run all this?”  


“So you and the other archangels, you’re like what, a cooperative?”  


“That’s a pretty good description actually. We… my brothers and myself, are a small group of cogs in a much larger machine. But we don’t run everything. There are places out there,” He turns his crystal blue eyes up to the sky but somehow Dean knows he is looking much farther than that , “Which none of us have even seen. Where we probably couldn’t even function. No one person , one race, one type of being could run all of it.”  


“So you and Castiel….” Dean hesitates, wondering if Castiel is all right.  


Lucifer sees it and whispers, “Cassie, your pet is pining,” and Castiel pops into existence next to Dean, looking a little dazed but in one piece and not nuked, which is good enough for Dean. He wants to hug Castiel, but feels reticent in front of Lucifer.  


“Lucie,” Cas acknowledges Lucifer with a nod, and doesn’t want to look at Dean.  


Dean realizes why.  


He rounds on them. “This was a set-up. This whole thing. All these years... decades even?”  


Lucifer sighs, “Millenia, millions of years, hundreds of millions. We start from scratch. It's really the only fair way.”  


Dean shakes his head and whispers, “You bastards.”  


Castiel hangs his head, and Lucifer looks sad. “Always with the blaming. He taught them that well, if nothing else.”  


There is a long silence , during which Castiel inches slowly closer to Dean, like Dean is his oxygen.  


Lucifer sighs. “We have put out an invitation. Hopefully you’ll get someone who’s not quite so….”  


“… much of a DICK,” Dean finishes his sentence for him.  


“Unfortunately, yes. We are sorry that you have had to put up with this, Dean. You didn’t deserve it. Not any of it.”  


“So what, new boss, new rules? How do we know this one will be any better than the last one?”  


“Hello Dean,” whispers a husky voice, and Dean knows in that moment that whatever his life was before, he is now oh-so-royally screwed.  


He turns to look into the welcoming eyes of Amara.  


“Oh, crap.”  


He has a not-so-irrational desire to hide under Cas’s wings and never come out.


End file.
